To assist them, our website has been newly revamped, incorporating short ‘potted histories’ of the major factories operating from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, with galleries which browsers can search for examples that match their cherished family heirlooms.
Alongside the industrial factories, we also feature a number of individual artist-decorators, who, within the smaller market of the Scottish industry were rarely employed ‘in-house’ as they would certainly have been in the heartlands of the English potteries, but whose work undoubtedly inspired industrial manufacturers, particularly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to produce ‘artistic’ designs in a factory context.
In addition, our website also provides information about a small number of true craft potteries, which despite the lack of economies of scale available to their English counterparts, managed to survive during the difficult years around the Wall Street crash of 1929, and the nineteen-thirties, and even well into the late twentieth century.
Much remains to be done and new information will be appearing on the site regularly, so it is vital that full members and subscribers log on to regularly to keep up with the latest news and information. We look forward to knowledge coming in to us from all over the world. as well as suggestions for improvements.
I would like to thank most sincerely Jamie Ross, Douglas Bowie, Jean MacKenzie and Alex Inglis for their dedication especially in the last few difficult months which has enabled us to get to this point, from which we hope to grow.
As the Society moves into its 50th year in 2022, I wonder what our founding fathers and mothers would think of the body of knowledge that has been collected and is now being made available for all who wish to see it. They would be astounded. There is still much to be discovered, so let’s carry on for another 50 years at least. It will be a fascinating and rewarding journey
Heather Jack
President
The Scottish Pottery Society